Documents belonging to a defunct recruitment agency containing workers’ personal details have been discovered discarded in a street.

The paperwork - which dates back several years - contains documentation linked to Middlesbrough firm Jo Hand Recruitment.

Many of the documents were complete, unshredded and left exposed to the public in the back alley doorway of the business’ former Albert Road office.

Acting on a tip-off on Wednesday, The Gazette found a dump of documents containing the personal and financial information of a number of Ms Hand’s company’s former clients.

Among the discarded papers were work records and company invoices which revealed clients’ names and addresses as well as the details of payments made to individual clients.

Dating back to 2011 and printed on letter-headed paper, the papers appear to be the property of Ms Hand’s original recruitment firm which controversially went into liquidation in October 2015 following the collapse of the Redcar steel firm SSI UK.

Speaking at the time, Ms Hand said she had “no alternative” but to go into liquidation because she was owed more than £500,000 by SSI.

Ms Hand, the 2013 winner of the Susan Dobson Award for North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, said of her former steel employees: “They are very angry with me and with SSI - but we were unable to pay them.”

She said she was determined to help as many former steel workers into jobs as possible through Jo Hand Recruitment and Consultancy.

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In a separate development, it has now been announced that Ms Hand’s business has been re-branded The Human Group North East after the agency secured a six-figure investment.

The Gazette spoke to The Human Group’s operations manager and former Jo Hand Recruitment employee, Andrea Conway about the documents left in the back alley.

Ms Conway said: “That is not the doorway to our old offices.

“I can assure you we use a confidential waste company and have a certificate of destruction. I have proof of this along with invoices.

“We have a spreadsheet of the contents of every bag that was confidentially shredded. I have no idea where this rogue bag has appeared from.

“We are not in the business of dumping waste as discussed.”

Now following its re-brand, The Human Group says it will create and safeguard jobs and “build upon the existing services to provide clients with an enhanced recruitment offering”.

The six-figure re-brand was funded via the Finance for Business North East Angel Fund which “aims to boost the regional economy" and since inception in 2010 says it has created over 360 jobs and safeguarded over 280.